Samuel Rutherford eBook

to George Gillespie when he was on his deathbed, ’Hand
over all your bills, paid and unpaid, to your surety.
Give him the keys of the drawer, and let him clear
it out for himself after you are gone.’
And then, with the ruling passion strong in death,
he added, ’Die not on sanctification but on
justification, die not on inherent but on imputed righteousness.’
And then, to come to the very last act of all, there
is what we call the death-grip. A dying man
feels the whole world giving way under him. All
he built upon, leaned upon, looked to, is like sliding
sand, like sinking water; and he grasps at anything,
anybody, the bedpost, the bed-curtains, the bed-clothes,
his wife’s hand, his son’s arm, the very
air sometimes. On what, on whom will you seize
hold in your last gasp and death-grip?

’Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in Thee!’

XVI. JAMES GUTHRIE

’The short man who could not
bow.’—­Cromwell.

James Guthrie was the son of the laird of that ilk
in the county of Angus. St. Andrews was his
alma mater, and under her excellent nurture
young Guthrie soon became a student of no common name.
His father had destined him for the Episcopal Church,
and, what with his descent from an ancient and influential
family, his remarkable talents, and his excellent
scholarship, it is not to be wondered at that a bishop’s
mitre sometimes dangled before his ambitious eyes.
‘He was then prelatic,’ says Wodrow in
his Analecta, ‘and strong for the ceremonies.’
But as time went on, young Guthrie’s whole
views of duty and of promotion became totally changed,
till, instead of a bishop’s throne, he ended
his days on the hangman’s ladder. After
having served his college some time as regent or assistant
professor in the Moral Philosophy Chair, Guthrie took
licence, and was immediately thereafter settled as
parish minister of Lauder, in the momentous year 1638.
And when every parish in Scotland sent up its representatives
to Edinburgh to subscribe the covenant in Greyfriars
Churchyard, the parish of Lauder had the pride of seeing
its young minister take his life in his hand, like
all the best ministers and truest patriots in the
land. But just as Guthrie was turning in at the
gate of the Greyfriars, who should cross the street
before him, so as almost to run against him, but the
city executioner! The omen—­for it
was a day of omens—­made the young minister
stagger for a moment, but only for a moment.
At the same time the ominous incident made such an
impression on the young Covenanter’s heart and
imagination, that he said to some of his fellow-subscribers
as he laid down the pen, ’I know that I shall
die for what I have done this day, but I cannot die
in a better cause.’